Category Archives: General

Al Jessup of Beckley adjusts one of his 12 satellite dishes Saturday at his home on James Street. All 12 dishes are in working order receiving 5,000-plus radio and television stations and Jessup plans to buy his 13th soon. Lew Whitener/The Register-Herald

With 5000 channels from twelve dishes, this guy is a role model for the digital lifestyle. I’m not sure I understand what “free channels” means. Isn’t that stealing content? If he is, he’s not exactly keeping a low profile from DirectTV and the Dish Network. His family definitely can’t complain that there’s nothing on TV tonight!

The January issue of PC World magazine has an article with some real data on the downward trend seen in HDTV prices; a well-known phenomenon in the electronics industry, it’s still interesting to look at some real numbers about how much prices can change over just 12 months. Based solely on the graph at the left:

• 42-inch HD plasma in Q4 2004: ~$4,000
• 42-inch HD plasma in Q4 2005: ~$2,600

• 32-inch LCD TV in Q4 2004: ~$3,000
• 32-inch LCD TV in Q5 2005: ~$1,600

The take-home message here? Prices fall. Forget timing the market, but know that any shiny new plasma/LCD/DLP today will cost less in the future. If you braved the Black Friday scrum and came away with a smokin’ deal (and sans an ear or a finger), props to you. If you want a big screen and can get a fair price for it, do it.

U.S. online holiday sales are expected to hit nearly $20 billion this year and should take off on Monday, when consumers return to work and their fast Internet connections after the long Thanksgiving weekend.

“Cyber Monday,” the term coined for the Monday after Thanksgiving, comes on the heels of the busy “Black Friday” shopping day when many brick-and-mortar retailers begin turning a profit.

The good news for online shoppers this year, is that “Cyber Monday” is becoming the Web shopping equivalent to “Black Friday” when retailers launch major sales and discounts to drive traffic, analysts said.

So now the Monday after Thanksgiving kicks off the online holiday shopping season. It’s a good thing to have online access at work. So now, you can not only surf the web to your heart’s content, but you can do your gift shopping as well. Let’s hope work doesn’t interfere with this too much.

From MSNBC.

Wow… I don’t know if this is any good or not, but it’s amazing to see how far the prices for flat-screens really have dropped. I’ve been doing a lot of comparison research at the ~$2200 and ~$1600 price points, but this is amazing. Anyone have any experience with the Syntax Olevia products?

Also, anyone who missed this year’s Black Friday, make sure you bookmark bfads.net for next year!

I know there are plenty of devout iPod users out there, but this is giving new meaning to the phrase “I worship my iPod.”
See the story over at Gizmodo.

I’m not sure if all this is from the Video iPod, but if it is, I’d like to thank Apple. Their latest iPod has certainly become a catalyst for some change in how TV content is going to be distributed. First, some popular ABC shows (like “Lost”) are available as downloads at iTunes stores. Then, NBC News decides to stream their nightly news broadcast for those that missed it (often me). But, I didn’t expect CBS to be giving their content to the search engines to store for them. This could be huge as Google has been playing in video recently, but really didn’t have much content. CBS could easily solve that problem. Even Google may have to go out and buy some hard drives to store all of this if it works out. In the meantime, it’s nice to see the networks coming out of the dark ages.

“REUTERS reported that CBS is talking to both Google and Yahoo about storing TV shows and news archives.
And in another demonstration of convergence, the BBC said yesterday it will be streaming some of its live TV coverage on its web site.

But convergence of PCs and broadcast technology could be as threatening to big outlets like CBS as online news has been for print titles.

Quite a few traditional media outlets have realised that they’re a bit behind on the old online publishing front, which threatens their traditional revenue streams and staff laden business models.”

From The Inquirer.

Tis the season for computer bargains! Don’t waste your precious time, fight the crowds, and drive around any more than necessary. Interested in a holiday notebook purchase? Laptop Logic has done the legwork for you; let your fingers do the clicking to the best deal. How good you wonder? How about their “best deal,” an HP notebook from Wal-Mart for the amazing low price of $378.

“This machine has a lot to offer for the money. Its biggest advantage is the AMD Sempron processor, with PowerNow! technology. While performance will be similar, or even slightly slower than the Celeron M competitors, the big advantage you’re going to see here is battery life. This chip has a 25W TDP, higher than the Celeron M’s 21W TDP, but the big thing here is PowerNow! The Sempron chip’s clock will dynamically fluctuate based on load, just like the Turion 64 and Pentium M. Due to this, users will probably see around 2.5-3 hours of battery life on the reasonable 6 cell battery. The rest of the specs are pretty standard, except when you browse to the memory. 1GB maximum DDR RAM? We’re not sure HOW they pulled this off, but HP’s website does not lie (or does it?). While 1GB will be more than sufficient for the average user, or the kind of use buying a sub-$400 laptop, it is something to keep in mind for the long run. All of the other machines have 3 USB 2.0 ports compared to the ze2108wm’s 2 ports, but it does have a higher capacity battery and the more advanced Radeon Xpress 200M graphics.”

This is definitely worth waking up early to snag. Roll back prices never looked this good- best of all no rebates! Read all about it here.

Yep, so the proliferation of iPod-based businesses continue, and with the video ‘pod, the portable video player content creation market will likely start getting interesting (I know, Creative and Archos got there first, but when Apple arrived the market got a big time playa).

Enter PodDater.com, which, currently in beta, does exactly what the name implies. The site lets visitors search for interesting profiles, download the vids to their ‘pod and play away. Don’t leech, either; reciprocate with a vid of your own, damnit!

Yeah, we all know that text ads are sooooo 19th century and online dating sites with mere photos are über prosaic (that’s right, Match.com). Besides an opportunity to really show your personality and dynamically describe yourself, blah blah blah, video gives us the opportunity to do what everyone else does when looking at images on dating sites: be superficial (give us a pic, for crying out loud!).

I do feel sorry for Adrian, the bleach-blond Chicago real estate professional whose short vid plays from the main PodDater page. Not only does she enjoy revolutionary activities like shopping, eating out and walking along lake Michigan, but she also happens to be one of only 16 females on the site at the time of this post. After clicking through some 20 or so profiles, ones with actual videos seemed to be a bit rare [Note: this does include guys]. Mmmmm…beta.

Get busy seducing that 4.6 percent, guys. Positive thing: if you’re searching for a lady and find one with a video, she theoretically either knows how to shoot and edit it herself, or is savvy enough to find someone to help her do it. Props in my book.

Hollywood, move it on over! The Hollywood Walk of Fame is now demoted to the
Walk of Lame compared to San Francisco’s Metreon sidewalk. The San Francsico Walk of Game is a sidewalk thunder stealer, and inducting members by the fist full.

The Walk of Game is gaining 6 more members, on behalf of Sony, the Metreon’s older brother. Starcraft, Final Fantasy, John Carmack, Sid Meier, EverQuest, and of course… the lovely Laura Croft.

October 2004, San Francisco, the WCG conference was held. I was there. Not as a player, but as a volunteer helper. The World Cyber Games is to gamers, as the World Cup tournament is to soccer, the Super Bowl is to football, the World Series is to baseball, the gold medal to ice skating. It’s the one, all the marbles. 64 different countries were represented last year, and this year 67 attended.

Some teams show up in matching jump suits, with handles embroidered on their breast and a team name, sometimes accompanied by a logo, across the back. Geeks Gamers of all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities, gather to compete in almost half a million dollars in prize money. This isn’t your neighborhood LAN party, we’re talking Seoul, San Francisco, and now Singapore. In the final standings, the USA placed 2nd overall. Korea took top for most overall wins. Brazil, Germany, and China filled the 3rd-5th spots. This isn’t a game anymore, these… games.

Next year it’ll be in Italy. Bonjourno!